Origin

It became all about survival—about getting away from the big, bad unknown—while trying to snap pictures of the spectacle at the same time.

Got to love the near-innate human response to capture everything on film.

People scurried like ants, running in every direction, abandoning their cars in their rush. They streamed out of the streets, a flood of different shapes and sizes, pushing into one another, falling over their own feet. Some guy knocked into Kat, forcing her away from the SUV. For an instant, I lost sight of her in the pandemonium.

I rushed forward, parting humans like the Red Sea. Their excited screams were already an annoying buzz in my ears.

Kat!

Her answer was both in my head and out loud. “I’m here!”

She stumbled around a woman who had frozen in front of me. The look of shock on the lady’s pale face roused a bit of guilt in me, but then Kat was in front of me, her eyes wide.

“I think we got a lot of people’s attention,” she said, dragging in air.

You think? I touched her arm, overly glad at the welcoming spark that traveled from her skin to mine.

Luc appeared beside us, along with Archer. “We should move some of the cars out of the way?”

Good idea. Keep Kat with you.

I centered my attention on the line of cars in front of us. Four lanes. All packed with vehicles ranging from ones on their last leg to luxury cars I was really sad about scratching.

Archer joined me. “I’ll help.”

He took one lane while I focused on the one in front of the Hummer. The ability to repel things away from us was easier than pulling it toward us. It was the release of energy, like a shockwave.

Stretching my arms out, I watched the car before me start to shake, its rims rattling and gears grinding. Then it shifted to the side. One after another, cars were sliding out of the way like an invisible giant had swiped its arm across the road. I went as far as I could see, then pulled back, knowing that Daedalus already had to be aware of what was going on.

Turning back to where Andrew stood, I saw him shooting off blasts of energy like there was no tomorrow. Hidden behind an empty tourist bus was a teenage guy, filming it all on his phone.

A bit of restlessness trickled through my veins. This would be all over YouTube in seconds. Off in the distance, I could hear sirens. With the way traffic was backed up behind us, I doubted they’d be here soon.

“Look!” Kat shouted and pointed to the sky.

Overhead, a helicopter circled the scene, shining floodlights over where Andrew stood. It wasn’t the military. A KTNV 13 News emblem was emblazoned on the side. Damn. They’d gotten here before the police.

“This will be live,” Kat said, stepping back. Her eyes were wide. “They’ll be filming live—it’ll be everywhere.”

I don’t know why it didn’t sink in until that moment. Not like I didn’t fully grasp what this would mean, but seeing the news copter circling the Boulevard struck home. The images were fed into the newsrooms, and from there it would be signaled out to the entire nation within seconds. The government could take down a few videos here and there, even a hundred of them, but this?

They couldn’t stop this.

Right now people were most likely sitting in front of their TVs, watching this unfold and having no idea what they were really seeing, but knowing that what they were viewing was something serious.

“Something epic,” Luc threw out, meaning he was being a peeping bastard. “You did it, man. They can’t lock this down. The world will know humans aren’t the only life-form chilling on this planet.”

Yeah, it was going to be…epic.

My gaze crawled along the road. There were still a lot of people fixated on what Andrew and Dawson were doing. Both were zipping back and forth across the road, practically skipping over the cars behind us like an alien game of Frogger.

That was what people all across the world were seeing.

There was no way that could be explained away. Daedalus was going to freak.

“That’s what you wanted, right?” Archer frowned as a man darted across the street. “Go public. You got —”

A dark helicopter flew in from between two large hotels—a large black bird. It didn’t take a genius to realize that was a military copter. It flew overhead but didn’t shine any lights down like the news copter was doing, tracking the movements of Dawson and Andrew.

It circled around Treasure Island, disappearing behind the wide hotel. The feeling of unease magnified. Reaching out, I wrapped my fingers around Kat’s wrist and at the same time yelled for my brother.

He stopped on top of a red BMW, crouched in his true form. When he picked up what I was feeling, he shot off the car, grabbing Dee from the car behind him and bringing her down to road level.

Not a second too soon, either.

The black bird circled back around, rising high in the sky as it flew sideways, as if it were lining itself up…

“I have a real bad feeling about this,” Luc said, walking backward. “Archer. You don’t think—”

I saw it first—the tiny spark from the bottom of the military bird. It was nothing. Just a minimal flare of light and shouldn’t have turned my insides cold or stopped me dead in my tracks. What came out of the copter moved too fast for human eyes to track. The stream of white smoke against the dark blue sky told me all I needed to know.

Whirling around, I pulled a stunned Kat against my chest and brought us both down to the warm pavement, curving my body over hers.

A loud crack caused her to jerk in my arms, and I tightened my hold.

Horror settled in my gut like stones. Anger was an acid in my veins. The news copter spun erratically as smoke billowed out of the tail. It whirled across the sky, its floodlights dipping and rising over the pirate ship and beyond. The copter kept spinning, falling out of the sky, heading straight for Treasure Island.

The explosion rocked the cars. Kat screamed as she twisted in my arms, trying to look up. But I didn’t want her to see it. I held her down, pressing her face against my chest. I knew my touch was hot and had to be nearly unbearable this long, but I didn’t want her to see this.

Oh my God… Someone’s thoughts mirrored my own. Dawson? Dee? Archer? Luc? One of the Thompsons? I didn’t know.

Flames shot out of the center of the hotel, an orange glow that quickly crawled up the trembling structure. Plumes of thick smoke rose, darkening the sky.

Archer was frozen beside the Hummer. “They did it. Holy… They shot it down—the military shot them down.” 

Chapter 29

Daemon

Panic erupted, the kind of which I’d never witnessed before. People streamed out of the hotel—the ones who’d been able to escape—and spilled into the pavilion and the streets.

Still in my true form, I pulled Kat off the street. She was saying something, but her words were lost in the screams. Christ. I never expected this—I never thought they’d go after humans, but I had underestimated the extent to which they’d go to keep us secret.

“But it’s too late,” Luc said, grabbing the arm of a woman who’d tripped and went down on her hands and knees. He pulled her up. The side of her face was a mess of raw tissue and burns. “There’s no stopping what has already been seen. And look.”

I twisted around, bringing Kat with me. She’d been staring at the woman’s mangled face for too long. The man who’d been in the car Dee had jumped on was still filming everything—us—on his phone.

Shielding Kat, I turned back to Luc. He had his hand on the woman’s forehead, and she stood as still as a